


If You're Going Through Hell, Call For Back-up

by Brigantine



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, BAMF Sheriff Stilinski, Deputy Derek, Humor, M/M, POV Sheriff Stilinski, POV Stiles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-08
Updated: 2013-04-08
Packaged: 2017-12-07 21:54:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/753512
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brigantine/pseuds/Brigantine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Something carnivorous has landed in Beacon Hills, and Sheriff Jim Stilinski would prefer his son stay out of the woods at night.  When Stiles takes up running in the preserve, Deputy Derek Hale gets cranky.</p>
            </blockquote>





	If You're Going Through Hell, Call For Back-up

**Author's Note:**

> See, you conceive an idea for a short, simple little story, and you try to help it grow, nurture it, and the next thing you know, it’s flunked out of college, started wearing sequins and moved to Las Vegas.

Sheriff Jim Stilinski shoots a glance at Medical Examiner Irene Mahealani across the body of Lawrence Nichols, late of Roseburg, Oregon and, unfortunately for Mr. Nichols very, most definitely late of Beacon Hills.

“Animal attack, huh?”

According to Douglas County Health and Social Services records Mr. Nichols, age 63, has been homeless and wandering since 1992. This morning at approximately 7:15 Mr. Nichols's remains, mostly dismembered and partially devoured, were discovered by an unlucky employee out back of Ray's Food Place, next to the dumpsters. Irene has had to i.d. the poor fellow by the fingerprints of one hand, and one hand only.

“Sure,” Irene says. “Mountain lion. Maybe a bear.”

Jim raises an eyebrow at her from behind the acrylic face shield she insists all visitors wear while in her lab. Initially he’d balked at the precaution, until she reminded him that putrefaction begins with gasses in an enclosed space, and Jim didn't dispute her argument that no one wants a surprise face full of rotting corpse. 

“Okay. Grizzly’s more likely to go after a human than a black bear, and we haven’t had a lot of grizzlies in downtown Beacon Hills lately.”

“If it’s hungry enough, maybe a black bear. It's not unheard of for them to brave the fringes of urban areas. Didn't we conclude it was a mountain lion last time?”

Jim nods, “Bear it is, then. I’ll give Baker a call down at the Gazette, give him the scoop, make him happy. You want a look at the photos we took of the bloody tracks at the site? Derek’s got a theory, but he needs to talk to his mother, or maybe his uncle Peter first. In the meantime, a pair of fresh eyes might help.” 

“Sure, I can do that. But first, have a look here, at these wounds that are from bites, rather than from the claws.” Irene adjusts her overhead light, and points to a half dozen gaping wounds.

Jim makes a face. “How'd they get all oozy and gooey like that already? He wasn’t lying out there more than a few hours, and it's October. It's cold at night.”

“Yeah,” Irene agrees. “That’s what I was thinking.”

~~~~~~

Stiles's father cautions him over the phone, "It's already dusk, Stiles. You're going to break your fool neck."

Stiles argues, "There are hiking trails, Dad. I'll stick to the main one the day hikers use."

"Should I call Melissa at the hospital and tell her to expect you?"

"Ha, you are so amusing! Look, I'm eleven hours into a writing marathon for an American history paper due in two days, and the caffeine and the hours planted in front of my laptop have taken their toll. I need to get out of the house before I go bibbledy."

"Can't you go over to the high school and use the track?"

"And run in circles? I do enough of that with my homework." Stiles slows the Jeep for the turn, and eases into the small, gravel-topped parking lot. It's pretty much a glorified turnout next to the road. The preserve isn't really set up for family frolicking.

"You're already there, aren't you."

Stiles pictures his father's long-suffering expression. He's probably rubbing his eyes. "Hey, at least I called. I won't be here long, so don't worry." Stiles shoulders open the driver's side door of the Jeep.

There's an RV parked at one end of the lot, nudged partway into the brush, and in danger of nosing into the ditch on that side of the turnout. The RV is bronze and brown, with a ‘Sam’s Club’ sticker on the rear window, and a row of those little happy family stickers across the bottom edge; father, mother, boy, boy, girl, cat. There are no camping facilities in the preserve, and it’s kind of late in the day for parents to take their kids on a hike. The preserve is no place for toddlers after dark. Or for Stiles, if his dad is to be believed, but whatever.

"Worrying is my job," his father says. "You know I'm going to be late getting home, right? Give me a buzz when you get back. Ease your old dad's mind."

Stiles hooks one heel against the left fender of the Jeep and slowly stretches his hamstrings. "As long as we're on the subject of worry and old dads, let me point out that if a certain Deputy Hale enables your junk food addiction again tonight I will _know._ I have ways. Secret, super-spy ways." 

His father snorts, "You make puppy eyes at our civilian aide."

"We have a thing, Mrs. Bowman and me." 

"She's your grandma's age."

"She is not! Maybe Grandma's younger sister. She misses her grandkids, she likes to _share,_ and I like to listen."

"I believe the appropriate word is 'gossip.'"

"And I believe the appropriate phrase is 'Sheriff Stilinski should live long and prosper'," Stiles corrects. "I'm going now, braving the dark, scary woods at night, lions and tigers and--oh hey, a bunny! Hi, bunny!" Stiles waves at the rabbit, then feels like a dork and shoves his hand in his pocket. The small cottontail eyes him warily for a moment before it scoots beneath a bush.

His father advises him, "Careful. Those little fluffballs are sneaky. Oh, sure, you see one, and think, hey, fuzzy and harmless, but the next thing you know, they're everywhere, and you're at bay like the panting stag."

Stiles tightens his right shoelace. "Like the what?"

"Sorry, meant to make a cool Star Trek reference to Tribbles and ended up with Longfellow. Maybe Keats."

"You’re a weirdo, but I appreciate the effort."

"I am woefully deprived of red meat, and I think my brain is broken."

"Dead guy they found in pieces downtown this morning?"

"Yeah. So you understand my fatherly paranoia, right? Plus of course you just being you."

"Hey!"

"Listen, I gotta go do cop things. You try not to trip over a tree. Love you, kid."

"'Bye Dad. Love you too." Stiles hangs up, stuffs the phone into the pocket of his sweats, and takes off at an easy lope up the main trail. 

The path Stiles is following is a reasonably well-kept trail, but in spite of his assurances to his father the idea of running it through the woods in near blackness does not appeal. While Stiles is confident that he is unlikely to fall into a ravine or be devoured by rabid bunnies, tripping over a stick and ending up face first in the dirt is not outside the realm of possibility. Fond as he is of his best buddy's mom, Stiles would prefer to avoid needing Melissa McCall's particular skill set at the hospital tonight.

By the time Stiles guesstimates he's halfway along the loop, the daylight has slipped behind the western hills, and Stiles is starting to wish he'd asked Scott to come along. Also, that he’d brought a flashlight, but flashlights are for people who think ahead.

Stiles makes his way around a blind turn in the trail, carefully avoiding a small rock slide. The trail clears and Stiles raises his head to check the path before him. 

There is an enormous black shape in the middle of the path. It has _eyes._

Stiles screeches and backpedals frantically before considering that turning his back on this thing might not be the best plan.

The giant black shape blinks at him, and Stiles lets out another screech, because apparently he's just getting started with the being terrified, and then the shape shifts its position a little, and Stiles realizes that he's boggling at an enormous, hairy dog planted on its butt in the middle of the path, and it is _staring_ at Stiles with its weirdly bright eyes, and that is just a goddamn large animal.

Stiles wheezes a little and squeaks, "Wow, you're a big, big doggie that I don't recognize, with, hey, look at that, no collar, no tags, and..." He swallows and takes a deep breath in an attempt to calm his rocketing heartbeat. "You are really remarkably wolf-shaped."

The animal's coat is thick and shaggy, and so black it gleams blue where the tips of its fur reflect what little moonlight filters through the trees onto the trail. It regards Stiles calmly with its strange, intense eyes. The pupils are blown deep and black inside wide bands of bright amber within rings of blue. 

"So, what sort of dog are you?" Stiles asks, in what he hopes is a reassuring conversational tone, while wondering privately whether the beast will give chase and rend him into tiny shrieking pieces when Stiles turns his back to walk, not run, because fleeing headlong is just begging for messy demolition, back down the trail to the safety of his Jeep. He wonders if this thing is capable of eating his Jeep. What if it's _already_ eaten his Jeep, and now it's merely toying with him? What if the Jeep was the main course, and Stiles is dessert?

"Did you eat my Jeep?"

The beast takes a deep breath, its broad chest filling slowly, as though it's got all the time in the world to think through what it's going to do with the fragile, slow-moving human in front of it. It lets its breath out in what might be construed by an over-active imagination as a judgmental sigh, and then the shaggy behemoth actually _rolls its eyes_ at Stiles.

Stiles feels his heart rate settle. "There's no need to get snarky," he tells it.

~~~~~~~~~

“Biology’s gonna finish me,” Scott whines. “D’you know how many vertibra, vertabri? Vertebrus --neck bones a giraffe has?”

“Ver’eb’ae,” Stiles corrects helpfully around a mouthful of curly fries. He swallows awkwardly around the starchy, greasy goodness and washes it down with a slug of Mountain Dew. “And there are seven.”

“Only seven?” Scott asks skeptically. “I’d think there’d be at least twenty or thirty. They’ve got a really long neck.”

Stiles opens his arms to demonstrate, “Long vertebrae, man. Like, a foot each or something.”

Scott drops his forehead to the warm surface of their table outside the campus cafeteria. His voice comes out muffled and forlorn against the faded plastic. “I am so doomed. I will never be a vet, and Dr. Deaton will give me his Disappointed Look when I flunk out of friggin’ _community college._ Davis won’t even look at me once they’ve seen my shitty bio. grades on my transfer application.”

“Maybe you need to quit studying with the fair Allison,” Stiles suggests. “On account of no studying ever happening when you do that.”

Scott raises his head off the table to better look offended. “We do too study! Um…” He grins sheepishly. “Quite a bit. Some?” Scott winces.

“So how’s Allison's studying going for our impending Econ. mid-term?”

“She says Finstock is insane,” Scott hedges.

Stiles smirks, “Granted, but for a jock he is remarkably erudite when it comes to distilling Adam Smith.”

Scott makes a confused face at his cheeseburger. “Who’s Adam Smith?”

Stiles sighs and decides to pick his battles. “Listen, I’ve got a question you can maybe actually help me with.”

“Cool, ‘cause I could use a confidence boost right now.”

“Wolves.”

“Wolves…?” Scott looks at Stiles expectantly and chews a bite of his cheeseburger. Orange sauce leaks out one corner of his mouth. He makes an unhappy face and begins disassembling the burger.

“Average size, weight, and do they ever have blue eyes?” Stiles figures Scott’s on pretty firm ground here, given his love for all the canine creatures of the world, ever. Scott’s love for dogs is nearly as ridiculous as his devotion to Allison’s dimples.

Scott picks a slice of raw onion off his lunch and flicks it into the ivy. “I’m assuming you’re talking about gray wolves, which, just fyi, we used to have in California but now we really don’t?”

“Sure. Gray wolves. Although this one is black.”

“Okay, well, they come in different colors, but they’re all called--“ Scott coughs, spends a minute wheezing for life-giving air before he downs half his Coke in a desperate rush and demands, “What do you mean, ‘this one’?”

“Last night while I was running the main trail through the preserve this humongous, hairy dog met me halfway," Stiles explains eagerly. "I almost pissed myself out of sheer panic before I realized he didn’t seem interested in shredding me. He’s completely black, and he has these bizarrely bright gold and blue eyes. I assumed he was a dog, but he kinda looks like a wolf.”

Scott yelps at him, “Dude, what were you doing out at the preserve at night? Are you crazy?”

“It wasn’t night when I started,” Stiles says defensively. “Jesus, you sound like my dad. It got dark faster than I thought it would. I’ll start earlier next time.”

“Duuuuude!” Scott hisses, bug-eyed with alarm.

“What? Stop making that face. Your eyeballs will fall out and get eyeball goo all over your fries.”

“They found a dead deer out there this morning! My mom told me a couple of your dad’s deputies stopped by the nurse’s station in the ER before she got off shift this morning.”

Stiles demands with no subtlety at all, “Which deputies?”

Scott crinkles his nose in distaste. “She didn’t say, so no, I don’t know if one of them was your tall, built and broody Deputy Derek Hale, and anyway, so beside the point!”

Stiles flaps one hand frantically at Scott. “Lower your voice! My father has spies all over this town!” His paper napkin has stuck to his forefinger and wafts in front of Stiles’s face as though he’s some swooning debutante. He scowls and tears the napkin free. “The last thing I need is for Derek to find out about my hopeless crush. Anyway, I was merely fact-gathering.”

Scott raises a doubtful eyebrow. “If you say so.”

"Shut up. So, the deer. It was dead. Things die, Scott. Nature is a cruel mistress.”

“No, no, they told my mom it was _mangled,_ man.” Scott curls his hands into greasy, salt-encrusted claw shapes and interprets the act of mangling via mime. He looks like an aggressive marmot.

“You’re thinking large predator?”

“All Mom got was what the deputies said, but it doesn’t exactly sound like death by old age, does it?” Scott makes angry marmot gestures again.

Stiles ventures, “It could have been hunters, or a mountain lion.”

“Why would hunters leave a deer torn up in the woods?”

“I don’t know,” Stiles says irritably. “Could we get back to my question?”

Scott counters, “Could you please take this seriously? I don’t want your dad to find you partially devoured in the woods.”

“That makes three of us, buddy, but you can quit mother henning me.”

Scott snorts. “I’m your best friend. That’s my job. You remember that old saying about what curiosity did to the cat? I know a lot about cats."

"Cats, but not so much giraffes," Stiles teases.

"I was planning on being a _small_ animal vet." Scott huffs, "Look, male gray wolves run about six feet from nose to tail. So are you sure your giant wolf-like non-homicidal dog is a guy?”

Stiles shrugs. “Seemed like a pretty chill dude once I figured out he had no immediate plans to bring me down like Bambi, but I wasn’t gonna ask him to show me his junk. He’s fucking huge though, so I’m confident.”

“Huh.” Scott blinks thoughtfully. “Did you say blue eyes?”

“Bright blue.”

“Definitely not a pure wolf, then. They always have some kind of amber eyes, or maybe brown, but not blue.”

“Mix, maybe?”

"He could maybe have some Husky in him, or Australian shepherd. They’re really smart, but they’re not very big, and you said this dog--”

“'Cause at one point I think he was herding me,” Stiles interrupts. “We got to that part of the trail that branches off from the main path and leads up toward the old Hale house, and he stood right in front of it, glaring at me like he didn’t want me to go that way.”

Scott makes a face. “Why would you want to? The path is half grown over by now, and it’s a creepy old ruin.”

“Yeah, I know, but…” Stiles shrugs, remembering the tense look of the dog as he blocked the old path, the way he had brushed his heavy shoulder up against Stiles’s hip, angling him into the main trail.

“Be kind of funny,” Scott considers, “a dog that’s half wolf and half shepherd. Kind of like being half Hatfield and half McCoy.”

“Sure,” Stiles agrees absently, thinking about the freshly killed deer in the woods. “Hilarious.”

~~~~~~~~~~~

Stiles shows up at Jim’s office at about half past three in the afternoon.

“Aha!” Stiles draws himself up in righteous dudgeon and jabs an accusatory finger toward the sandwich in Jim’s hands. 

“It’s got _salad_ on it,” Jim says defensively. “Look, sliced turkey, lettuce, tomatoes, on whole wheat bread, and three not very big at all slices of bacon.”

Stiles advances on the desk and Jim lifts off the top slice of bread to show him the evidence.

“Okay,” Stiles allows. “I’ll let it slide this time.”

Jim grumbles, “Thanks.”

Derek Hale drifts up behind Stiles, silently, in that way he tends toward, and he peers over Stiles's shoulder. “Food police?”

Stiles yelps and whirls, a quick flail of limbs. “Oh my God, do you do that on purpose?”

Derek's dark eyebrows rise with his amusement. “Do what?”

“The sneaking up on people thing. Are you in training to become Beacon County’s first ninja deputy?”

Derek smirks, a full-on smile hinting at the corners of his mouth. “Some people are just naturally quiet.”

“Sneaky,” Stiles accuses stubbornly.

“Not making all sorts of racket is not the same as being sneaky,” Derek argues amiably.

“Hey, I--“

“This is all very entertaining,” Jim intervenes, “but I missed lunch, and I’m hungry. Could we get on with whatever this is about?”

“I came to ask you if you’ll be home for dinner,” Stiles says, “and whether you’ve got a preference. But clearly you’re not going to be hungry by dinnertime, if you’re stuffing your face full of fatty foods.“

“Lettuce and tomatoes,” Jim repeats firmly. “You could have called to find out about dinner. I am not revealing details of an open murder investigation.”

Stiles fails to look innocent. “Got any persons of interest yet?”

“Don’t you have homework?”

“As a matter of fact I do, but first I’m going for a run.” He eyes Jim’s sandwich suspiciously. “Is that low fat mayo on that sandwich?”

Derek frowns at him. “Not the preserve again?”

“Yes,” Stiles says. “The preserve, but I’m starting earlier, so I don’t get caught in the dark again.” 

"The preserve at night isn't safe, Stiles. The park rangers found a slaughtered deer out there this morning.”

"Yes, yes, mountain lions, and tigers and bears, oh my."

"Stiles," Jim says. "What is it with you suddenly obsessed with running? And the preserve?"

"No more lacrosse team to keep me in shape," Stiles explains. "My life as a sedentary academic is beginning to take its toll. I’m getting little baby love handles, and my brain is in danger of leaking out my ears." 

“Have you considered taking Scott running with you?”

Stiles grimaces. “You know Scott’s my BFF, my man, my bro, but he starts to whine about all the other things he could be doing around a quarter mile in.”

“Young McCall does yearn for purpose,” Jim observes. “And the lovely Allison. Please try to be home before it gets dark.”

Stiles gives an amused huff. "For the sake of my elderly dad?"

"If that's what'll work. Now scoot. Your daylight's waning, and my bacon and I would like a little privacy."

As Stiles turns to leave he waggles one hand in a wave that includes himself, Derek and Jim. "If I find out there's been a Meat Lover's pizza in this office after I leave, there will be words. Strong words. Possibly an office-wide e-mail."

Derek's gaze tracks Stiles as he stops to chat with Nancy Bowman at the front desk. “Bossy young squirt.”

Jim shrugs, “Eh, you live with him long enough, he gets under your skin.”

"Yeah," Derek says, sounding distracted as Stiles lopes out of the station into the afternoon sunlight. "Like ringworm."

Jim hoots quietly into his lunch and hides a smile by biting down into the savory goodness of lean smoked turkey and fatty bacon. With real mayonnaise. Oh, yeah.

~~~~~~

It's still late afternoon, and Stiles is about a third of the way up the main trail by the time the dog shows up. Stiles dances past a small boulder in the path, high steps over a stick, looks up, and the dog is standing quietly a few yards ahead of him, watching him with his odd eyes. In the mellow, dappled light of the afternoon sun through the trees he seems to be made of shadows and crow feathers. The breeze picks up the tips of his fur and ruffles it, tiny black waves that look soft to the touch.

Stiles grins helplessly.

That the dog has shown up as he hoped it would makes something bright flicker warm in his chest. He's not completely gone over dogs in general the way Scott is, but there's something sharp and intelligent in this dog's eyes that Stiles has found himself drawn to - that, and the fact that the dog is as big as a Shetland pony, at least half wolf, and has apparently decided to play guardian to Stiles rather than devour him in convenient snack-size chunks. 

Stiles pulls a neon green tennis ball out of his pocket. "Look what I brought!"

The dog tilts his broad head curiously, watching Stiles's hands. Stiles bounces happily on his toes, tosses the ball from hand to hand a few times, then lobs the ball past the dog down the path. The dog eyes Stiles for a moment, looks back to where the tennis ball is slowing to rest, then looks back at Stiles, who urges, "Fetch! It's a game, dude! A dog game." 

Stiles waves toward the ball where it's dribbled off to one side of the path like a gutter ball at a bowling alley, and pitched up against a clump of yellowed grass. "Aren't dogs supposed to like to play games with humans? Mrs. Niedermyer's cocker spaniel, Randall, loves to play fetch. Mrs. Niedermyer bought him a red rubber ball with a bell in it. Actually, I think it might be a cat toy, but Randall is a small dog, and I won't tell him if you don't."

The dog trots down the trail to pick up the tennis ball daintily in the front of his mouth, turns and carries it part of the way back toward Stiles. He sits down just out of Stiles's reach, maneuvers the ball until it's at the back of his mouth between his molars, and deliberately grinds the bright green tennis ball into a fine, gooey sludge. He pads toward Stiles and spits the sludge out onto Stiles's right sneaker.

"You are the rudest dog ever," Stiles declares dryly. "I'm going to name you Muffin."

Muffin lets out a deep, put-upon sigh, followed by a low grumble, and turns his back on Stiles, padding softly up the path ahead. Stiles grabs a sapling for balance while he shakes the remains of the tennis ball off of his sneaker, leaving behind a sticky, radioactive green heap on the trail. 

Stiles complains, "Now you've turned me into a litterer. It’s not like I brought along a pooper-scooper."

Muffin, unimpressed, looks back at Stiles over his shoulder, narrowing his eyes thoughtfully. After a moment he trots back toward Stiles, then at the last instant darts serpent quick towards Stiles's left sneaker. 

Stiles feels a sharp tug as the dog dances back, grinning at Stiles with his double row of sharp, ivory teeth.

Stiles gawps, "You untied my shoe! That was a practiced surgical strike, like you're some kind of circus performer! If you were a human you'd be a contortionist, or an escape artist." Stiles re-ties his shoe laces, contemplates appropriate retaliation, and, still half crouched, leaps after the big dog. Muffin bolts ahead, but not before Stiles grabs the tip of his feathery black tail and yanks on it.

Muffin tucks in his hindquarters, whirls in place twice, glaring at his own tail as though it's betrayed him, then stops, uncurls all wild, furry, muscular six feet of himself, and glares at Stiles with an expression that can only be described as scandalized.

"Oh, yeah," Stiles brags. "That was me. Faster than I look, huh."

Muffin tilts his head in a gesture Stiles is starting to recognize as considering, or possibly plotting. He bounces on his front feet, then drops his entire front end, leaving his haunches in the air, his tail thrashing back and forth as he whuffles at Stiles.

"That's a play bow!" Stiles squeaks happily. "Scott thinks I never pay attention when he babbles about vet stuff, just because I started selectively tuning him out after the ninety-seventh ode to Allison's dimples, but ha! That is a 'play-with-me' bow! So, you wanna play chase, is that it, big guy?"

Muffin bounces back to his feet, yips a fair warning, and then lunges forward to bite and release the corner of Stiles's hoodie. He skitters away up the trail, turns, and squints at Stiles. He slurps at his muzzle with his long, red tongue, taunting.

Stiles makes a face at the glistening dog drool on his hoodie, then narrows his eyes challengingly at Muffin. "Oh, dude, it is _on!_ "

~~~~~~~~~

Stiles is shoveling the remains of a toaster waffle into his mouth when Jim comes down for breakfast. Stiles has a 9 a.m. class on Wednesdays. Geology, if Jim recalls. He figures he’s got about five minutes to commune with his son before Stiles runs out of the house for school. He heads for the coffee pot Stiles has started and pours himself a cup. He asks, as he’s adding milk and sugar, “So, how was the preserve last night?”

“No hungry tigers, and home by dark, as promised," Stiles says. "Has anyone reported a dog missing?”

“I’m people control, not animal. Did you find a lost dog?”

“There’s this dog at the preserve. He’s big and beautiful, and… ” Stiles hesitates. “I think he’s trying to protect me.”

“Protect you from what, exactly?’

Stiles looks at Jim as though he’s a little slow. In his defense, Jim got in late last night, and Stiles has been awake and caffeinated for about an hour ahead of him. “Right. The mangled deer, the dead guy behind the supermarket. But what makes you think this special dog you've discovered at the preserve is trying to protect you?”

“He keeps herding me.”

Jim watches Stiles over the rim of his coffee cup. “Herding you?”

“He’s suckered me into taking the shortest loop people generally use when they run the preserve. Not that I’ve been training for a marathon or anything, but he’s done it twice now, and I am sensing some intent. Plus he’s definitely keeping me away from the old trail to the Hale house. ”

Jim thinks about what might be out at the Hale house. It’s not a happy place. “Why would you want to go to the Hale ruin?”

“That’s what Scott said. Oh, and he brought me a squirrel.”

“Scott brought you a squirrel? A live squirrel? Is this part of his apprenticeship with Dr. Deaton?”

“No, not Scott!” Stiles makes an impatient face. “And definitely not a live squirrel. The weirdo dog hunted it down in the bushes and then dropped it on my shoes, like some kind of tribute. This animal seems to like to drop disgusting things on my feet. I don’t get why that is. Do dogs have a thing about dropping items on people's feet? I’ll ask Scott. I think he was trying to apologize for scamming me into cutting the run short.”

“And for keeping you away from the Hale place.” 

“Truthfully, I have no particular urge to go there, especially not on my own. Creepy place. On the other hand, the big guy’s insistence that I stay far, far away is curious enough that I can’t help wondering if it’s maybe somewhere you might want to look into. I mean, if the deer and the dead guy are connected, maybe who or whatever killed them is holed up in the old Hale place, and that’s why the dog doesn’t want me near there.”

Jim hides a smile. “Has this heroic animal got a collar? Tags, perchance?”

“Nada. Hence me wondering whether anyone’s looking for him. Scott thinks he might be a wolf and shepherd mix.”

“A _what_ and shepherd mix?” Jim coughs on his coffee. “Wolf?”

“If Scott’s right and he’s part shepherd then his trying to herd me out of trouble would make sense, right? Generations of looking after lost little lambs?”

Jim snorts, “Little lamb, huh? For what it’s worth, I’ve heard it said that wolves can be surprisingly protective of ridiculous human children.”

“Ha.” Stiles gulps the dregs of his coffee, and grabs his backpack off of the chair next to him. “Gotta go get smart.” He gives Jim a one-armed hug that Jim returns, clinging for maybe an extra second, and then Stiles dashes for the front door. 

Jim hollers after him, “Have fun storming the castle!”

He hears Stiles cackle as the door slams behind him.

A minute later Jim’s phone alerts him to an incoming text. He picks it up off the kitchen counter next to his keys and sees a text from Stiles, with a photo attached.

“last night. named him Muffin. seems ok with it.” 

Jim peers at the picture of a large, fluffy black wolf with a sour expression on its face, and a dead ground squirrel clenched between its jaws. He blinks bemusedly at the photograph. _"Muffin?"_

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Jim and Irene crouch ankle deep in the dead leaves around the tattered remains of the second man murdered this week. Contained within a circle of bare earth are the remains of a camp fire, with an old oven rack set on top of a couple of rocks, and a dented steel coffee pot boiled dry and scorched over the cold embers. A few feet to one side is a patched nylon tent. There's no identification on the body, but the camp appears to be mostly intact - unlike the corpse - and Jim is cautiously hopeful for an i.d. as his deputies sort through the unfortunate man's meager belongings. Otherwise, they'll have to go with... well, with dental records, mostly.

Jim glances at Irene. “Some time last night, you think? Looks like he was taken while he was making supper."

“Yeah,” Irene agrees. She points at the teeth marks, and the slashed wounds on the back of his neck and his shoulders, or what’s left of them. “Look familiar?”

Jim shines the little flashlight on his key ring onto a spot to the side of the throat, near where the jugular used to be. “Hey, bring your magnifying lens over here.”

Irene hands the lens over to Jim, and he crouches close. The dampness of the earth leaches up through his trousers. He'll have muddy knees all day. “Does it look to you like there are two different kinds of wounds here?”

“What do you mean?” Irene adjusts her glasses and bends closer, kneeling in the forest floor next to Jim.

“I mean there’s a bite from a different set of jaws underneath all this tearing. Shorter set of jaws, more human-shaped.”

“Huh. Yes, I see. I’ll need to get him back to the lab to be sure, but it looks like he might have bled out from a smaller, more precise bite to the jugular, and then was savaged by the second, bigger set of teeth.”

“Working together to bring him down, or was this second set meant to cover up the first?” Jim looks up and searches the area for Derek. “Hale? Thoughts?”

Derek kneels next to Irene. “It’s got that same weird mix of smells as the first kill.” He makes a face like a disgruntled cat. “It makes my nose itch.”

Della Rhames saunters over from where she’s been poking through contents of the tent. “Found a Colorado driver’s license belonging to Norman Kurtz. At some point he lived in Fort Collins, but this expired almost seven years ago.” She seals the license into an evidence bag, and adds, “We got some strange footprints over here in back of the tent. Sheriff, you want me to get Doc Deaton to have a closer look at that deer?”

Jim nods, and Irene asks Della, “Ask him if he can meet me at the clinic, will you? I want a second look, myself.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Stiles is sitting at a table outside the cafeteria and contemplating trying to stuff an entire slice of pizza into his face, just for the empirical satisfaction, when a shadow falls over him from behind.

He turns, expecting Scott, Allison, or both, but instead he finds, “Derek.”

“Don’t run the preserve tonight,” Derek says, looming solemnly.

Stiles teases, “Lions and tigers?”

“You shouldn’t be off on your own, not until we figure out what's going on.”

“Aw, you’re worry-stalking me. That’s sweet.”

“The rangers found a man slaughtered out there this morning,” Derek explains, “a half mile off the main trail.”

Stiles is man enough to admit, at least to himself, that this is worrisome. “Killed last night?”

“Half eaten,” Derek says distinctly.

Stiles swallows uncomfortably and sets aside his slice of pizza. “Derek, I realize you took an oath to protect and serve, but you can't hover over everybody in Beacon Hills.”

Derek steps to Stiles’s right so that Stiles doesn’t have to keep twisting to look up at him. “Not everybody has taken it into their head to start running the preserve in the evening,” he starts.

Derek, Stiles muses, looks as though a Gucci model and a Gallic gladiator had a fling, then left their love child to be raised by wolves. His short black hair gleams in the afternoon sun, and Stiles has imagined in many a private moment that it would be soft, if he could ever get his hands in it. There’s a little ring of amber around the pupils of Derek’s eyes that makes them changeable. Sometimes they look blue, but at other times green, and always Derek seems able to see right behind Stiles’s words and know whether he’s being honest. Stiles finds that as interesting as it is disturbing. Scott, on the other hand has complained to Stiles more than once that Derek tends to look at either of them as though they’re always one step away from juvenile delinquency.

“… the second murdered man in Beacon Hills and a deer…”

Stiles admits he might be a little bit obsessed, but then Stiles is young and bubbling with youthful energy and optimistic hormones, while Derek has a manly jaw that looks like Superman would bruise his knuckles on it, and shoulders like a _billboard,_ but the thing is, the most important thing that Stiles has discovered, mostly through three years of persistent teasing and driving Derek to distraction, is that Derek is very smart, and surprisingly funny in an understated sort of way, once you get past the scowling and the looming.

"… far all of the attacks appear to have occurred at night, but that in itself is not proof that whatever is responsible is strictly nocturnal...” 

And Stiles realizes, with a sort of sandbagged sensation that somewhere along the way with the teenage crushing and the lusting and the teasing, and Derek sighing and growling as though Stiles exists to be a pain in his neck, but trying to look after him anyway, Stiles has landed himself squarely in love. 

He is a total goner for Derek Hale. Stick a fork in him, call him done. Holy Jesus Hizzonor Christ on a pogo stick.

Stiles is having a fucking _epiphany_ here, and it is not at all convenient. Where’s his pizza? He needs something to do with his hands or he’s going to start pawing at Derek’s very broad chest, right here in front of God, the school cafeteria, and oh, look there, his history professor, Dr. Parks.

“…inquisitive, impulsive, and too smart sometimes for your own good.” Derek takes a sharp breath at the period, as though rattling off so many words at once has exhausted him. He eyes Stiles severely. 

Derek shaves each morning, but Stiles is well aware that there will be dark, sexy beard stubble by dinner time. God, Stiles thinks tragically, Derek is so far out of his league. Not that Stiles hasn’t always known that, but still. Depressing.

“Also disinclined to back down from a challenge," Derek adds. He looks at Stiles expectantly, dark eyebrows drawn together. Apparently this is the part in the routine where Stiles is meant to agree with him and promise to stay safely at home for the duration of the investigation. 

“How do you do that?” Stiles asks aloud, because his brain hates him.

Derek tilts his head slightly, eyebrows narrowing further. “Do what?”

“Loom over people like a total creeper, but at the same time come across _completely sincere,_ like you just want to help old ladies and rescue kittens from trees.”

Derek’s broad shoulders droop a little. “Stiles…”

“Yes, all right, fine. If it will make you feel better, I’ll stay away from the preserve for a while.”

Derek glares at him. "You are lying to me right now, aren't you."

Stiles glares back. "Quit being perceptive. It's very irritating."

Derek makes an exasperated noise. It's ridiculously cute. "Am I going to have to handcuff you to something to keep you inside tonight?" Derek realizes his mistake a moment too late. He blushes to his hairline. “Um."

Stiles leers gleefully at him, “Do you dream about handcuffing me to things, Derek?" Yes, please.

Derek growls, "You are impossible." 

Stiles tells him, and he says this with sparkly, newly-realized love, “You look like a frustrated border collie.”

“I don’t respond to whistle commands,” Derek glowers.

Stiles wants to climb him like a jungle gym.

~~~~~~~

Derek stomps into Jim’s office, looking about three seconds away from busting a blood vessel.

Jim absolutely does not grin, snicker, smirk or chortle knowingly. “Did you talk to Stiles?”

“Your _son…._ ” Derek begins. His eyebrows have gathered together like storm clouds. "Your son is impossible."

Jim nods sympathetically. “I like to think he gets that stubborn streak from his mother, but the truth is, he was a joint effort.”

Derek slumps into the guest chair in front of Jim’s desk, and rubs at his face. His voice is muffled through his fingers. “I swear, any given day I don’t know whether I want to shake him, or… Ugh.”

“Hair’s too short to be locked up like Rapunzel,” Jim suggests, "and you know he doesn’t respond like a sane person to threats of physical violence.”

Derek lowers his hands and glares at Jim as though it’s his fault. “It’s very frustrating.”

"You want to protect him," Jim asserts kindly, "but you are terrified that if you finally get around to making the kind of move that might persuade him to let you, you're gonna fuck it up beyond all redemption."

Derek stutters, “What? Oh, no, wait, that was just, no--“ He gives up and subsides, looking caught out and generally mortified. “How did you know?”

“I like to believe I’ve been trained by time and circumstance to pick up the odd clue, but the truth is, the two of you have been _pining_ after one another since the first day you showed up for work, and he was in here, getting hollered at for being insane. There were hearts floating in the air between you two. Cartoon hearts, floating in the air around your heads. It was ridiculous.”

Derek blushes, “There were not! Were there?”

“You,” Jim points a finger at Derek, “are a straightforward kind of guy. That interrogation by intimidation thing you do, where you get right up into some mouthy punk’s personal space and quietly threaten to rip his throat out with your teeth? That is a beautiful thing to watch, if not exactly correct police procedure, but Stiles? Stiles is immune.”

Derek groans, “God, he really is. Where the hell is his sense of self-preservation?”

Jim reaches back to one of his book shelves and plucks off a coffee mug filled with rubber bands. Across the front of the cup is printed, 'If You’re Going Through Hell, Keep Going.'

“You remember what that day was all about? That mess at school with the Mafia wanna-bes bringing in the steroids?” Jim rolls the cup between his hands. A few rubber bands fall out, and he picks at them.

“Yeah,” Derek says. "The lacrosse team got caught up in it. Jackson Whittemore, his clique. His girlfriend, the Martin girl, she was nearly killed. Scott and Stiles tried to handle the situation, and they were hurt.”

“Yep.” Jim breathes slowly against the bitterness and the fear, both still sharp even after three years. “After the dust had settled, Stiles told me that at one point, when he realized things were getting severely out of hand, he’d gone to their school guidance counselor, looking for some kind of advice he could use without ratting out his friends. What he got was a young woman who looked barely older than he was, and an old quote from Winston Churchill.” Jim holds up the cup as exhibit A. “ A week later I came across this at the drugstore downtown. Twelve bucks. This is the advice a guidance counselor with a master’s degree gave my sixteen-year-old son when he and Scott were trying to steer their friends clear from a group of violent criminals willing to kill both of them to get what they wanted.”

Jim rocks back in his chair, fiddling thoughtfully with the coffee cup. “His mother was taken from us when he was eleven years old, and he’s been trying to take care of me ever since. I keep this stupid mug as a reminder of just how fast my kid has had to grow up, and how reckless he can be trying to protect the few people he’s got. Not that I’m likely to forget, but sometimes…" Jim sighs regretfully. "I’m not home for dinner as often as I’d like.”

“Stiles has grown into his shoulders. He has, um.” Derek blushes and stutters, “Stiles has good shoulders. Strong, I mean.” He winces. “Shit.”

Jim tosses the coffee cup lightly onto his desk, spilling out the last rubber bands, and he leans forward, grinning, “Oh, son, you’ve got it bad.”

"I don’t--my romantic track record does not exactly bode well for future success," Derek rushes helplessly.

“Do _not_ let Kate Argent haunt you," Jim orders brusquely. "I know six years difference seems like a lot at Stiles’s age, but he is nineteen now. _She_ was pushing thirty when she did what she did to you, and then tried to do to your family. You were only fifteen. You were a child, and she was a homicidal nut job. You are not her, Derek.”

“I know, but…” Derek swallows hard, clenching and unclenching his fists in his lap. “I guess ten years is a long time to run scared.”

 _“Cartoon hearts,”_ Jim repeats. He glances up as Bob Kramer knocks on the frame of his open office door.

Bob asks Derek, “You want to come play cowboy with me and Ed Greenberg from Animal Control? Gunderson’s bull has got loose again and is terrorizing Verna Jennings’s chickens.”

Derek snorts and rises out of Jim’s guest chair with noticeably more grace than he’d got into it. “What is it with Alvin and chickens?” He asks Jim, “You need me here for anything right now? “

Jim waves them both off. “Nah. Have fun, Hopalong.”

Derek gives him a quizzical look as he sidles past Bob. Bob sighs commiseratively at Jim and follows Derek down the hall toward the lobby. “Hopalong Cassidy? Gene Autry? Roy Rogers? Jeez, kids today. You remember John Wayne, right?”

Jim sits back in his his chair, and rolls his shoulders. He hears Nancy Bowman laugh out front. He wonders whether it will be Derek or Stiles to get his act together and make the first move. Maybe he should start an office betting pool. He wonders if he can get hold of a cheeseburger without Stiles finding out.

~~~~~~~~

It's later than he'd hoped to get here when Stiles parks the Jeep in the turnout lot, but he’s got a class at four o’clock on Wednesdays, and right now he can’t afford to go AWOL.

There’s that brown and bronze RV parked in the gravel lot again. It’s in a different spot than the last time he noticed it, but he recognizes the row of stickers across the rear window from the first night he came out to run. The license plate is from Nevada.

The sun hasn't set yet, but down here on the trail among the trees it’s plenty dark, and he flicks on his flashlight, carrying it low to pick out the path without blinding him to what else surrounds him.

By the time he reaches the place where the trail connects with the path to the old Hale house the sun is almost below the horizon, and he’s beginning to worry. Muffin has always met him on the trail well before this point, and stationed himself on Stiles’s right by the time they’ve got to the old path. 

Stiles supposes Muffin has an owner somewhere, and goes by another name, and even if he doesn’t, Stiles hardly dares imagine what his father will say about a large, wolf-like stray dog possibly becoming part of their family. He’ll deal with all of that later. Right now he just wants to get him out of the preserve. Derek was right. It isn’t safe here. Stiles figures it’s his turn to play sheep dog.

He’d thought about bringing Scott along, but he’s dragged Scott into plenty of trouble already over the years, and anyway Stiles isn’t sure how Muffin will react to another stranger. Hell, he’s only met the dog twice himself. For all he knows Muffin might decide after all that Stiles is a pain in his furry neck and ignore him completely.

The old path to the ruined Hale house is barely more than a deer trail by now. The soil is still hard packed, but after nine years of disuse brush has begun to crowd the trail on either side. 

Stiles keeps a careful watch out for spider webs across the trail. It was a warm summer, and he has no desire at all to re-enact that one scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark.

By the time Stiles arrives at the Hale house the sun is well down, but the moon isn’t up yet. Stiles has kept imagining spiders on himself, Muffin hasn’t shown up, and Stiles’s heart is pounding in his chest, adrenaline spiking like a fight or flight response, but he doesn’t know to what. It’s driving him a wee bit nuts.

The woods around the house are bizarrely quiet. Having roamed the preserve for all of his life Stiles is well aware that there is an entire world of creatures that yawns awake at dusk to go about their business by starlight. There ought to be whole crew of critters making noise out here besides him, unless they’re in hiding from something horrible and carnivorous haunting the place, exactly like Derek and his dad warned him, and if there is it likely homed in long ago on his flashlight beam and the sounds of him stumbling along in the dark.

Neat.

He pushes aside an alder sapling and sweeps his flashlight low across the clearing. There’s a Sheriff’s cruiser sitting off to one side near the house. Its headlights are dark and the door to the driver’s side hangs wide open. Stiles can’t see anyone in the front of the vehicle from where he’s standing. The rear windows are tinted, and he can’t see into the back seat at all. Stiles’s light picks out the i.d. number on the cruiser. The cruiser is the one assigned to Derek, not to Stiles’s father.

He swings the beam of his flashlight between the cruiser’s open door and the house. The leaf litter has been churned up in places in the angle between the vehicle and the porch that fronts the Hale house. This was once the family’s front lawn, nine years ago, before some crazy woman tried to burn the Hale family inside their home. 

Stiles looks up at the old house rearing bleakly up against the night sky and tries to imagine what it must be like for Derek to come back here, to live in town knowing this wreck is still here. He’s often wondered why the family doesn’t pull it down and start over. Maybe it creeps them out as much as it does Stiles.

When he peers inside the cruiser the only things the beam from his flashlight picks out are Derek’s uniform shirt and his jacket lying untidily on the front seat. One of the shirt’s sleeves is inside-out, as though Derek pulled it off in a hurry.

Stiles mutters, “Derek, why would you leave your shirt in your car? Are you running around half-dressed?” He swings the beam up toward the house. “What the hell, man, where are you?”

The half-charred boards of the Hale house’s front porch creak beneath his feet as he makes his way carefully. He half expects the old boards to crumble beneath his weight. He even half expects his flashlight beam to pick out the splatter of the blood trail that leads up the stairs and through the gaping, weathered front door, but it sends his pulse spiraling upward anyway. If this were a horror movie, Stiles is the idiot character who would die messily in the first fifteen minutes. If this were a Star Trek episode, Stiles’s character would be wearing a red shirt. That this is neither is not as much comfort as he’d hoped.

“Stiles Stilinski,” he tells himself, “you have lost your damn mind.” And then, as he steps into the house, “Set phasers on kill, Mr. Scott,” as though he might invoke protection from the gods of Geekdom.

Unsurprisingly it’s even darker inside the house than it is outside, in spite of there being only half a roof between the burned out living room and the sky. His flashlight beam sweeps over a shape on the floor, and he yelps and skitters backwards. “Holy--!“

Stiles's heartbeat ratchets up painfully. He hisses, “Derek?”

It’s not Derek. The shape seems mostly human, but when Stiles trains his light on it, he steps back quickly in revulsion. The corpse stares at him with black, blood-shot eyes. It’s filthy with mud and leaves, and splattered with fresh red blood. The mouth is huge, gaping to show off rows of large teeth. The incisors are jagged and uneven, and the canines are long and sharp. The face is ape-like, and the creature died snarling, blood staining its teeth.

“It looks like a rabid chimp,” Stiles tells no one. “Oh fuck, it’s a zombie ape!”

“It’s a ghoul,” someone says.

Stiles utters a sharp shriek as a pair of eyes, glowing bright blue and amber stares out at him from the shadows past the damaged staircase to the second floor. 

Stiles yips, “Muffin?”

Deputy Derek Hale drags himself out of the inky blackness and demands, “What the hell are you doing here?”

“What are _you_ doing here?” Stiles flails a hand at Derek. “I mean, like that? Jesus, you look like you’ve been through a grinder.”

Derek crouches on the bare wood floor, glaring at Stiles. He’s in his uniform trousers and the t-shirt he normally wears beneath his shirt. On any normal day it’s a plain white t-shirt, but tonight it’s filthy with blood, dirt and smears of old char. There are holes and gashes in it, through which Stiles can pick out Derek’s skin, and the wounds that have bled red all over the shirt and down onto Derek's equally filthy trousers. 

“The ghoul killed the deer,” Derek rasps. “Shared in the killing of the two men we found. If they’re targeting the homeless there may be more victims that we haven’t found yet.” Derek grimaces and struggles to stand. Stiles darts forward to get a shoulder underneath him. 

“What, you spotted a monster - oh man, it’s a monster,” Stiles babbles. “That’s a real monster, Jesus Christ on a cracker!” He shakes his head sharply. “A monster with claws and fangs and at least two recent murders under its belt and you figured it’d be a great idea to get out of the car and fight with it? What the hell is the matter with you?”

“I’m a little better equipped to handle a ghoul than your average human,” Derek mutters. “Listen, I radioed your father, but you really need to get out of here. I appreciate the help and all, but you need to _go._ ”

Stiles snaps angrily, “Oh sure, just drop you on the floor and run off like a bunny. Fuck that. Wait, what do you mean, you’re better equipped than a human?” 

Derek sighs heavily. “Stop. Let go.”

“What? No!” Stiles clutches at Derek when he shakes him off and sags toward the floor.

“Just for a minute. I need to show you something. Back off, just… Please.”

Stiles backs away, careful not to trip over the corpse of the dead ghoul. Derek kneels on the ground, looks up at Stiles, and then his eyes glow, more brightly than they were beneath the stairs. Derek’s lips pull back from his teeth, and Stiles watches fascinated as fangs, honest to God fangs lengthen in Derek’s mouth. He thinks, _Wow, instant sideburns,_ and then he’s fighting back the sensible urge to run away very quickly, because that is not a human face Derek’s got there.

“Right. Wow. Werewolf. You know,” Stiles says, sounding remarkably calm for a guy on the near edge of a total brain melt, “I honestly did not see that one coming.”

Derek schools his face into its normal handsome shape, and Stiles considers that the glowy eyes and the fangs are actually not a bad look on him, minus the crazy sideburns, once Stiles gets past the yammering heebie-jeebies of Werewolf! Murdering carnivorous ghoul!

Derek says, softly, almost shy, “If you want to pretend you don’t know me now, I’ll understand, but I’d appreciate it if you don’t spread it around.”

“Oh my God,” Stiles realizes, “You’re Muffin! You are my wolf-shaped running buddy, and I tried to get you to play fetch! And I named you Muffin! _I pulled your tail!_ Please don’t eat me.”

Derek promises, “I won’t eat you. We need to go now.” 

“Crap, sorry,” Stiles takes hold of Derek again, hauling him toward the front door. “Do you have some kind of magic healing mojo, or will you need help? Because frankly, you look like shit.”

“Ghoul saliva is poisonous,” Derek says. “Humans usually don’t heal from a bite. It’ll take me a while.”

“Derek, you said if _they_ are targeting the homeless.”

“My uncle told me lone ghouls tend to stay around cemeteries, usually older and bigger than what we’ve got in Beacon Hills, where they can settle in. Otherwise they travel either in packs or as tagalongs with vampires.”

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Stiles announces loudly, “Elvis has left the building!”

Derek shoots him an apologetic look. “This was not how I’d hoped to eventually tell you.”

A happy spark lights up in Stiles's chest. “You were gonna spill your werewolf beans to me?”

“It’s not the easiest subject to bring up in casual conversation.”

“Derek,” Stiles scolds gently, “you could have started by just asking me out.”

A tall, narrow figure blocks the meager light from the broken doorway, and Stiles and Derek stutter to a halt. 

Derek growls and tries to stand on his own, struggling to shove Stiles behind him, but he sways and buckles to his knees. Stiles follows him down, and wraps his arms around Derek, pulling him close, as though that will protect him.

“Good evening,” the man in the doorway drawls smoothly.

Stiles says, “Bela Lugosi? That’s what you’re going with?” because apparently taunting vampires is how he’s going to deal with his new awareness of the supernatural.

The vampire advancing toward them is tall, dark-haired, but pale. He looks like an advertisement for the tragically hip and woefully underfed, although given recent events, underfed he probably isn’t. He looks down at Stiles and Derek with a sort of thoughtful contempt. “Like a mother and child,” he murmurs.

“What?”

“The way you hold your wolf,” the vampire says. “Useless, but rather lovely. Instinct, I suppose.”

Derek pushes out of Stiles’s grasp and glares at the vampire. “You’re trespassing. This is Hale pack land.”

“Your family,” the vampire says, “has been away too long. Word gets around.”

From the corner of his eye Stiles sees a second figure slink into the burned-out house. He’s got short blond hair, and Stiles thinks he might be handsome, except that his mouth seems too large. 

The new vampire hisses at Stiles, “You killed Donald!” He has a lot of teeth in that mouth.

“Don - what?”

Derek snarls, “I killed the ghoul, you idiot! I’m the only one here covered in blood!”

Stiles topples sideways as the vampire shoves him aside and throws Derek to the floor. Derek roars and surges to his feet. His eyes glow gold and blue in the dark, and he bares his fangs at the new arrival. 

The vampire jabs at Derek with what looks like an electric cattle prod, but it’s got to be a jury-rigged version, because it makes an awful noise when it connects with Derek’s shoulder, and Stiles smells the stink of scorched cotton. Derek snarls and flinches backwards, just out of reach. He’s still recovering from the ghoul’s poisonous bite, and assuming even half of the horror movies he’s seen are correct, Stiles knows that he and Derek haven’t got a chance against two vampires. Stiles scrambles to his feet, searching wildly about him for any kind of weapon. 

The first vampire calmly rips out a length of board from the floor, steps past the body of Donald the dead ghoul and strikes Derek hard across the back of his skull. Derek drops to one knee, and the blond vampire knees him in the face. Derek rolls away from the blow, but he’s weak, slow, and the vampire pins him to the floor, jabbing the rigged electrical prod into Derek’s chest directly over his heart. The stick crackles loudly, and Derek thrashes and lets out an agonized cry.

Stiles smells more scorched cotton, and this time scorched skin. He lunges for the vampire, reaching barehanded for his throat, but he’s jerked backward by a powerful grip on his hoodie. He twists in his loose clothing, lashes out at the dark vampire behind him, and manages to land one solid jab against the vampire’s left eye. The vampire snarls and slaps Stiles open-handed across the face. The blow is heavy, loud in Stiles’s skull, and it leaves him weak-kneed and seeing stars.

The vampire shifts his grip to the front of Stiles’s clothes, grabbing hold of not just the hoodie but all of Stiles’s warm layers. A sharp claw drags a thread of pain across Stiles’s chest as the vampire jerks him closer. He growls, “Stop. Now, or I will dismember you, right here in front of your pet wolf.”

Stiles quits struggling and tries to catch his breath. “Fuck you,” he wheezes, “and the zombie horse you rode in on.”

The vampire laughs at him, “Do you even fully understand what you’re dealing with, child?” He flashes a mouthful of sharp teeth a hand span from Stile’s face. His canines aren’t as long as Derek’s, but they look plenty sharp. “This isn’t a Disney ride.”

“The wolf killed Donald,” the blond vampire complains. He jabs at Derek again, making him yell and gasp for breath. The vampire grimaces and snaps his jaws at him.

The dark vampire sighs at the mangled body of the dead ghoul. “It is a shame, my friend, I agree. Donald was a good servant.” 

Stiles contemplates kicking the dark vampire in the balls. He wonders if they’re still vulnerable there, like they were when they were human. Hammer Film Studios never really got into that side of the vampire mystique.

The dark vampire’s expression turns thoughtful, and he sniffs at Stiles, trailing a long, cold tongue over Stiles’s neck, up under his ear. It’s deeply creepy. "Ahh, now I recognize the scent. The shepherd's boy."

"Derek? No, I’m not, we’re not--"

"You misconstrue, child." He looks at Stiles almost pityingly. “How can you not know?”

Stiles rattles off, “My dad’s not a pastor, I don’t know any shepherds that aren’t dogs…” and then the mental light bulb clicks on. “Shepherds are what you call law enforcement." 

"Only some of them," the vampire clarifies.

What?

He pulls Stiles forward again to give him another long sniff. At least there's no licking this time. "You are your father's son."

"But I've got my mother's eyes," Stiles snaps. “Look, this is all fascinating, and I'm sure someplace in the back of my head where my common sense has locked itself in its room I am gibbering with terror, but why are you here?"

The vampire draws back, regards him coolly. "Our coven has outgrown its territory. We’re looking to branch out."

“'House Hunters,' bloodsucking undead edition," Stiles snipes. And then it hits him. "Oh my God, the RV with the tinted windows and the Nevada license plates!”

“Donald drove the Winnebago,” the blond vampire pouts. “He didn’t mind the sunlight, and he understood the GPS.”

The dark vampire smiles at Stiles, all smooth, reptilian amusement. “Shall I turn you?”

“I look pasty in black,” Stiles babbles. “Claustrophobic. Hate the sight of blood, make ‘em put extra cheese on my pizza to hide the tomato sauce. Seriously, take some time to think this over. Sleep on it. Sunrise is at six."

"You are an insolent boy," the vampire observes dryly. “You try my patience.”

"Dude, I am just warming up. I can go on like this _all day._ "

"He'll stop soon enough once he's turned," the blond vampire says.

Stiles snorts, "Barring Van Helsing you guys are immortal, right? Think about that."

The dark vampire jerks Stiles closer, his breath cold, fangs bared. "First we avenge Donald on the wolf," he decides, “and then we turn the boy. Perhaps after that we’ll all three pay a visit to his father.”

Oh, _hell_ no.

The vampire is holding Stiles close enough that he’s got no room to maneuver. Stiles shifts closer still, presses his mouth against the vampire’s ear. “Give me your super vampire strength, motherfucker, and I will _end you._ ”

The vampire snarls, _”What?”_ and shoves Stiles away, holding him at arm’s length. “You dare speak so to me--?”

Pride. Super-villain rookie mistake. Stiles kicks out as hard as he can, and discovers that yep, the getting kicked in the junk thing does not change when you become a bloodsucking creature of the night. The vampire shrieks and doubles over, turning Stiles loose to clutch at himself, and Stiles thrashes backward. He trips over the bottom stair leading to the second floor, and starts frantically crab-crawling backward up the stair case.

He can hear Derek roaring with rage. The electrical prod crackles as the blond vampire jabs repeatedly at Derek, but Derek’s roar is gaining volume, and beneath his panic Stiles realizes first that either Derek is healing from the ghoul’s venom or the pure strength of his rage is overriding the pain and the paralyzing effect from the electrical prod, and second that there’s a new sound, smaller but equally important, over by the front door. It’s the sound Stiles likes to call his dad’s ‘Sarah Connor’ maneuver.

Stiles risks a glance past the enraged vampire clawing up the stairs after him.

“Hey kid,” Stiles’s father greets. Then he points the pump-action 12-gauge at the vampire tormenting Derek, and pulls the trigger.

The dark vampire lunges forward and grabs Stiles by the back of his knee, claws digging in hard. There’s a blast of sound behind Stiles from up the stair case, and the vampire’s head explodes like a watermelon under a sledgehammer. 

“Phhhaaugh!” Stiles rubs at his face frantically, trying to get the vampire brains off of himself. 

“You all right there, Stiles?” From three stairs above him Deputy Della Rhames gets a hand under Stiles’s left shoulder and helps him up. “Sorry about the mess, hon. I had to take the shot while I had it.”

Stiles nods, wiping futilely at the sticky goo. “No complaints. I’m never going to be able to watch a Gallagher show again, but I thank you from the bottom of my still-human heart.” He scrubs the hem of his hoodie across his eyes, and opens them to find his father smiling up at him from the bottom of the stairs. 

Stiles’s father shifts the butt of the shotgun onto his hip. “You all in one piece, kid?”

“Nice timing,” Stiles says. He steps down to his father’s level and into a fierce hug.

“Sorry we cut it a little fine there,” his dad apologizes, squeezing Stiles hard.

Stiles presses his face into the crook of his father’s neck and takes a deep, happy breath. His voice is muffled when he says, “Derek and Donald started the party without you.”

“Not really a huge surprise,” Stiles’s dad allows. "Werewolves, y’know. They’re pretty territorial.”

~~~~~~~~

It’s after 2 a.m. , and Stiles has showered and changed into his favorite worn sweats and an old Jurassic Park t-shirt. He’s lying on his bed trying to get to sleep, but after the events of the evening he’s pretty sure no one involved is going to get much sleep tonight.

He jumps when there’s a light tapping at his bedroom window. Heart pounding and visions of vampires in his head, he tumbles from his bed to find Derek peering at him through the window, the night sky and starlight behind him. His eyes are bright in the dark. 

Stiles opens the window, scolding, “Jesus, Derek, it would serve you right if I met you with a wooden stake soaked in garlic!”

Instead of an apology Derek says, in a rush, as though the words have been crowding together in his mouth all the way to Stiles’s bedroom, “You said all I had to do was ask you out. I mean. At the house.”

“At the house? You mean with Donald the ghoul and the vampires, and the bizarrely anti-climactic revelation that you _are a werewolf,_ out of all of that, that’s what you remember?”

“Um,” Derek dithers, and he looks suddenly unsure and maybe a little fragile, crouching on the roof outside Stiles’s window. “I thought, if you meant it…” Derek ventures, and then, quickly, “Or, if you didn’t or my timing sucks, which it often does, it’s fine, I can just--“ and Stiles is not going to be the idiot jerk who leaves Derek twisting in the wind when he's the one who finally got up the courage to make the first move.

“Or I could ask you in,” Stiles suggests. 

Derek lets out a quick little breath. “Right.”

Stiles backs out of the way while Derek slips into the room, all shadowy grace and tense shoulders.

Stiles is edgy with the fresh adrenaline, but Derek’s shyness makes him feel bold, sets his heels firm on the ground. “How are your ghoul bites?” He laughs, “This is my life now. My home town is the ‘Supernatural’ set, and I love a werewolf.“

Derek’s eyebrows flick up toward his hairline. “You love me?”

“I--“ Stiles feels his stomach swoop. He hadn’t meant to say that, not at all, but he did say it, and, “Yes.” He feels his face heating with a blush, and he jitters anxiously. “Um. If that’s okay.”

Derek smiles at him, broad and bright. “I’ve had a ridiculous crush on you since the day your dad hired me out of the academy. I hadn’t seen you since you were about ten years old, and suddenly there you were, skinny jailbait with a black eye and a split lip, and your dad was yelling at you and Scott for nearly getting yourselves killed, trying to run interference for your friends.”

“I really didn’t think that was my best impression ever,” Stiles admits.

“You made an impression,” Derek says. “You haven’t changed much since then. Strong now, not so skinny, but still just as reckless, trying to protect the people that you love.” He grins, repeating, “You love me.”

Stiles shoves at Derek’s shoulder. “Show me your ghoul bites.” He clicks on the bedside lamp, and they both blink at the light.

Derek takes hold of the hem of his shirt and wriggles it over his head, unveiling his body for Stiles; long, lean torso, powerful chest. Derek tosses the shirt aside carelessly and watches Stiles, waiting.

Stiles brushes his hands over Derek’s skin. Derek's skin is hot, satiny, a line of fine dark hairs trailing down the center of his stomach, past his belly button, into the waistband of his jeans. Stiles traces the ragged pink lines of the wounds that Donald the ghoul left on Derek's belly, across his chest, over the curves of his biceps.

Derek twitches faintly beneath Stiles's touch, and Stiles can hear his breathing quickening. Derek says, "Clean wounds heal quickly, no scars, but these will take a little while."

“When you were Muffin, I kept wanting to pet you,” Stiles confesses. “But I wasn’t sure you’d let me. Your ears looked really soft.”

“Here,” Derek offers, and Stiles looks up as Derek turns his head to show Stiles his right ear, slowly elongating upward, growing pointed and furry.

Stiles laughs and reaches up. The fur is short, fine and as soft as Stiles imagined it might be. “Nice trick.”

“Circus performer,” Derek teases as he shifts his furry wolf ear back to smooth, and human. 

“What did that vampire mean about my dad? The shepherd thing.” Derek's chest rises and falls gently beneath Stiles’s hands.

“You haven’t asked him?” Derek’s fingers trail lightly over the side of Stile’s neck. The touch sets off sparks through him, all the way down to his feet.

“We, uh.” Stiles takes a deep breath. "There was a lot of manly hugging, and possibly some manly sniffling. Rough night, narrow avoidance of death and/or mangling and/or eternal life as bloodsucking fiend. There were emotions happening, is what I'm saying. I thought I'd let it go for now, but..."

"Your father’s reasons for taking the badge are pure,” Derek explains. “It's your father’s nature to step in front when there's trouble. If he wasn't doing it as Sheriff he'd still manage it, somehow. You’re growing to be like him, in that way.” Derek brushes a thumb across Stiles’s cheekbone. He leans forward, nudges his nose against Stiles’s neck, nuzzles up behind his ear.

Stiles shivers, Derek's breath loud in his ear, warm against his skin. "You are totally smelling me, aren't you, with you super wolfy senses."

“That bloodsucker _licked_ you,” Derek growls.

Stiles closes the little distance between them, Derek’s chest pressed warm against his own. His heart is pounding in his chest, and it’s glorious. “Dad says werewolves are territorial.”

“Oh, we are.” Derek takes hold of Stiles’s shoulders and pulls him closer, snug at their hips. His voice rumbles pleasantly. “We really are. I’d like to kiss you now.” 

Stiles grins against Derek’s mouth, breathes his air. “Sure. I’ve already seen you running around the forest naked.” 

Derek laughs softly, and then he's kissing Stiles, slow and thorough, and distinctly territorial.

Stiles wraps his arms tight around Derek’s waist, and holds on.

~~~~~~~~~~~

At the Stilinski kitchen table Jim signs his name to first his own and then Irene Mahealani's official reports on their investigation into the deaths of Lawrence Nichols, Norman Kurtz, and one young male mule deer. Ghouls and vampires are notably absent from the paperwork. Jim sends a silent apology to the alleged black bear or bears unknown listed as probable cause of death, though he hasn't seen a bear anywhere near the area since last May. 

Jim closes the folder and stretches in his chair. He checks the old rooster clock on the wall. Going on 2:30 a.m. Mighty long day, what with the bloodsucking undead, and all. Once they’d got their heads blown off they’d stayed dead, same as any zombie, and then they’d rotted away at high speed, just like in the movies. Disgusting, but handy for clean-up. Plus, now Derek knows what ghouls and vampires smell like, though if Jim gets his wish Derek won’t have the opportunity again. It would help if Derek could get his family to show up around town now and then, even if just to be seen.

Jim had hoped to keep Stiles clear of all the weirdness going on around Beacon Hills, but given that it’s become something of a supernatural hot-spot lately, he supposes it was only a matter of time. Stiles will of course be consumed by fresh curiosity, and the supernatural is a whole extra world for Stiles to get into trouble, but Jim will worry about that tomorrow. At least when it happens - and it will - this time the kid will know who to call for help.

A sharp noise from upstairs draws Jim's attention, and his heart rate spikes before he remembers that what he's hearing is simply the sound of the old floorboards creaking up in Stiles's bedroom. He can just about tune in the murmur of two voices. He can't make out the words, and decides that's probably just as well. He considers sleeping in the downstairs bedroom tonight, once he gets around to it. In the meantime, he’s got two fingers of Jack Daniels neat, and an excellent set of ear phones on his iPod.

Hours later, in the soft quiet of the morning just past sunup, Jim is abruptly awakened from a light sleep in the downstairs bed by the sound of Stiles’s outraged yelp. 

“--a _wendigo?_ He told me he got cut up diving over a fence after a burglar!”

Jim winces into his pillow. Might as well get up and put the coffee pot on. He’s got an awful lot of explaining to do.

 

\--#--


End file.
